Looking ahead to the weekend:

The Angels are hanging tough in AL West. 11-13 without Vlad or John Lackey (who is scheduled for one more rehab start before rejoining the team).

Torii Hunter is off to a flying start (8 HR's). Mike Napoli has 4 and an OPS 1.165.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?...tnerId=rss_mlb

I think the Angels series is going to be a good one. I like our pitching matchups as they're pretty dinged up. However, the Angels are starting to heat up following an understandable funk in the wake of Nick Adenhart's passing.

I'm encouraged by our offensive production as of late, particularly in our ability to play back from behind. Again, the key for me is Kyle Davies. Lost in the excitement of yesterday's win was another very poor performance by Davies. I'm telling you we're going to need him to step up if we're going to win the division. I expect Bannister to be fine, Hochevar to step in...but Davies is the wild card.

baseball prospectus regularly runs a simulation of "the rest of the season" to determine postseason odds. They do this mostly a couple different ways, playing out the season 1 million times each way to get the odds.

One way is to throw out preseason PECOTA projections and only use this season's data. This obviously leads to weird skewed results early in the year, but gradually becomes more useful than PECOTA in the last month or so.

Under that method, the Royals are (obviously) very likely to go to the playoffs, behind only the Dodgers and Blue Jays (LOL).

Royals (43% division, 10% wild card, 53% playoffs)
Tigers (29% division, 10% wild card, 39% playoffs)
Indians (12% division, 6% wild card, 17% playoffs)
Twins (9% division, 4% wild card, 14% playoffs)
White Sox (7% division, 4% wild card, 10% playoffs)

The second method is to run the rest of the season with the PECOTA projections, which is more useful in the beginning of the year when teams are getting off to a good or bad start but would probably regress or improve.

Under that method, the Royals still have a decent shot, since we are 5 over .500 and PECOTA didnt think we'd be a bad team.

Tigers (41% division, 2% wild card, 44% playoffs)
Royals (22% division, 2% wild card, 25% playoffs)
Indians (17% division, 2% wild card, 19% playoffs)
Twins (11% division, 1% wild card, 12% playoffs)
White Sox (8% division, 1% wild card, 9% playoffs)

<table border=3 cellpadding = 4>
<tr> <td></td> <td> </td> <td> </td><td> </td><td> </td></tr>
<tr> <td> Kansas City </td> <td> 17 </td> <td> 11 </td><td> .607 </td><td> </td></tr>
<tr> <td> Detroit </td> <td> 14 </td> <td> 12 </td><td> .538 </td><td> </td></tr>
<tr> <td> Minnesota </td> <td> 13 </td> <td> 14 </td><td> .481 </td><td> </td></tr>
<tr> <td> Chicago </td> <td> 12 </td> <td> 14 </td><td> .462 </td><td> </td></tr>
<tr> <td> Cleveland </td> <td> 11 </td> <td> 17 </td><td> .393 </td><td> </td></tr>
</table>

I enjoy that graph, alnorth.

Early afternoon game tomorrow, al. You gonna start the thread?

Jarod Washburn vs Brian Bannister tomorrow. Another get away game that starts at 1:10pm. Perfect day to watch the boys continue the streak.

IN this streak the Royals have raised the team BA almost 30 points. From .238 to .265. Butler is up near .270 and even Mitch Maier with 2 hits tonight got his BA up above .200.

Streaks: W5
Last 10: 8-2
Home: 10-6 Road: 7-5
Runs Scored: 139
Runs Against: 109

More good stuff...

The Royals have a winning record against each of the divisions in the AL.

East: 4-3
Central: 10-7
West: 3-1

It's easy to get excited, I'm really excited how our offense is coming around, we're actually taking walks. I'm gonna wait before getting too hyped up on the playoff train. But if we keep playing like this we will be in the mix.

i think royals fans will start to really like maier. he plays hard, and i think he will get better at the plate. especially with seitzer. he's done a great job with this lineup. seitzer is the reason i don't think we should send avilles down to AAA. let kevin work with him some more. its his best shot to get better.

P W L ERA
Z Greinke 6 0 0.4
J Soria 1 0 1.17
J Wright 0 0 1.45
R Tejeda 0 0 1.69
B Bannister 2 0 1.96
J Cruz 2 0 2.19
G Meche 2 2 4.14
D Waechter 0 0 4.5
R Mahay 1 0 5.19
K Davies 2 1 5.88
S Ponson 1 4 5.91
K Farnsworth 0 3 7.56
H Ramirez 0 1 7.71

Interesting.

We absolutely slaughtered the NL last year. I wonder if we can pull that off again.

From the Whowouldathunkit file: The Royals are 11-3 when Willie Bloomquist is in the lineup...

Nor do they have Ervin Santana,Kelvim Escobar..things should get better for them and they will win the West..